One of the earliest CD-ROM based PC games I owned was Might and Magic World of Xeen. It was a whole whopping 2 CDs in size... only it wasn't. The game itself was only 30 megabytes or so, but when you talked to certain NPCs the game used audio CD tracks for their dialogue. This was the case with a lot of early CD-based games; the extra space was used for things like uncompressed music and dialogue, another example was Tomb Raider, where all the game's music, and the audio for cutscenes, were simply CD audio tracks you could play in any CD player.
The point is, without those audio tracks (or compressed versions), the game could have fit on a single CD several times over. It takes developers a while to find proper ways to utilize the space when a new format comes along. I'd say that is still the case with Blu-ray. However given the limited read speed and small memory capacity of the PS3 we may not see any significant use of Blu-ray until next gen, at which point I wouldn't be surprised to see Sony pushing yet another new format.
Corvin
The small memory capacity of the PS3 as compared to what? I swear to god, if you say anything other than "a PC," I'm going to scream.
As far as limited read speed, this has already been debunked. On the 7 discs that would be required (at the very least) for this game (considering the MS junk on the DVD's, it could potentially just as easily be 8, or even 9, due to the necessity of repeating basic content on each disc) the Xbox 360's read speed would be suffering tremendously because unlike Blu Ray it's not constant. The Blu Ray drive is only better because the disc is full, meaning it's going to read as quickly on the outside as it is on the inside. On a DVD-9 it's going to read faster on the outside edge of the disc and slower on the inside, dramatically so, meaning that on a set of full DVD-9's your average is going to be pummelled.
Basically, MGS4 on Blu Ray is going to be significantly faster on average than it would have been on DVD's. The variable read-speed and maximum speed on the DVD-9 is only an advantage when the game is NOT filling the disc to the brim. I.E. if we're talking a 5-6 gig game, here, you may be getting somewhere because the devs can put most if not all of the game data on the outer layers and the most necessary and frequently accessed stuff there too to get a slight speed gain over Blu Ray's constant read speed.
As though read speed has anything to do with the success of a format, especially considering how much of a bonus constant reading speed is for a high-capacity disc format.
Read Naughty Dog's comments on Blu Ray data streaming as implemented in Uncharted Drake's Fortune. Find me an example of that on 360 or on any DVD-9 format, and you'll win a prize.
The uncompressed audio in a great number of PS3 games that actually have it (many first-party titles already do), the audio usually takes a little more than the full capacity of a DVD-9 and nearing towards a potential amount of 14 gigs. Now, on a 25 gig disc, this is significant. But considering that we're talking about a 50 gigabyte, dual-layer Blu Ray disc, in all probability, the audio is taking up between 15-20 gigabytes of storage space. At the very, absolute, holy-s***ing most, we're talking maybe 25-30. I mean, if these guys REALLY went totally ballistic.
That still leaves 20-35 gigabytes of actual game data. Cry me a friggin' river, this is still potentially more actual, solid game material than the average 360 owner will ever meet on a 360 game in his lifetime.
But this is entirely speculative. I'm just saying, it's unreasonable to expect that something like 40-45 gigs of this disc is being filled up with 100% uncompressed audio. It's totally asinine.
The region-free audio is gone, the CGI is gone. It's 100% English audio and even the ONLINE and SINGLEPLAYER portions have been segmented on a 50 gig disc. He said compression took place and that they STILL had to cut things from the game to get it to fit. I wish you guys would take this stuff seriously. That's still an absolutely massive game and MINUS audio it would, in all probability, fill a single-layer Blu Ray disc to the brim + 1 DVD/single layer Blu Ray (whatever they're housing Online on, they didn't actually say).
Log in to comment